Details

The monument includes a substantial bowl barrow situated at the summit of a
gentle south facing slope in a public recreation ground. The barrow mound has
a diameter of 29m and stands to a height of 2.5m. A surrounding ditch, from
which material for the mound was quarried, survives as an earthwork 7m wide
and 0.3m deep around the north-west and south-west sides; elsewhere it
survives as a buried feature having become infilled over the years. In 1911,
during the construction of a bunker for the 13th hole of a former golf course,
a Late Bronze Age ceramic urn containing fragments of human bone was found
in, or in the vicinity of, the mound. The urn is now in the County Museum.

MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.
It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features,
considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Source: Historic England

Reasons for Scheduling

Bowl barrows, the most numerous form of round barrow, are funerary monuments
dating from the Late Neolithic period to the Late Bronze Age, with most
examples belonging to the period 2400-1500 BC. They were constructed as
earthen or rubble mounds, sometimes ditched, which covered single or multiple
burials. They occur either in isolation or grouped as cemeteries and often
acted as a focus for burials in later periods. Often superficially similar,
although differing widely in size, they exhibit regional variations in form
and a diversity of burial practices. There are over 10,000 surviving bowl
barrows recorded nationally (many more have already been destroyed), occurring
across most of lowland Britain. Often occupying prominent locations, they are
a major historic element in the modern landscape and their considerable
variation of form and longevity as a monument type provide important
information on the diversity of beliefs and social organisations amongst early
prehistoric communities. They are particularly representative of their period
and a substantial proportion of surviving examples are considered worthy of
protection.

The Stoke Park barrow survives well with little evidence of disturbance of the
mound or of the surrounding ditch.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Other
Acc No 73.11, Acc No 73.11,
SU 98 SE 3, NAR,

Source: Historic England